The Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s production of the play opened Wednesday with Stratford veteran Lucy Peacock playing the playwright’s cantankerous mother and Tom Rooney taking on the role of the Narrator — the playwright as a boy and young man reflecting on several exchanges between mother and son.

Tremblay is being praised in number of reviews for reanimating his mother as she was to him during his life in an unsentimental portrayal that suggests her own capacity for artistry.

Donal O’Connor makes a number of astute observations in his review for The Beacon Herald:

A discussion about one of Nana’s favoured melodramatic novels leads to questions from her son, as he grows older, about what’s plausible in art and what isn’t. “It makes sense in the book and that’s all that matters,” Nana declares as the Narrator focuses a critical eye on what he feels is nonsensical.

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